Tea at Trianon: Reburial of a Grand Duchess

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Reburial of a Grand Duchess

She was one of the Montenegrin sisters who introduced Empress Alexandra to Rasputin. From the History of Royal Women:

The remains of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolayevna and her husband Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholayevich have been reinterred in Moscow on 30 April 2015. Grand Duchess Anastasia was born Princess Anastasia of Montenegro on 4 June 1868 as the daughter of King Nikola I Petroviç-Njegos of Montenegro and Queen Milena of Montenegro. She was one of twelve children. She was known as Stana in her family. On 28 August 1889 she married George Maximilianovich of Leuchtenberg, the future Duke of Leuchtenberg. He had been married before to Therese Petrovna of Oldenburg, who had died in 1883 at the age of 31.

Anastasia and George had two children, a son and a daughter before divorcing in 1906.

In 1907 Anastasia married Grand Duke Nicholas. She was 39 at the time and the marriage remained childless. Her sister Milica married her husband’s brother Peter and they were thus also sisters-in-law. Anastasia and Nicolas were both very religious Orthodox Christians. Anastasia and her sister are credited with introducing Rasputin to Empress Alexandra Feodorovona. When the revolution began to take form Anastasia and Nicolas lived first in the Caucasus and then in the Crimea. They eventually escaped from the Crimea on board the British battleship HMS Marlborough. At first they lived with Anastasia’s sister Elena, who was Queen of Italy.They later lived in France. Nicolas died 5 January 1929 and Anastasia followed on 15 November 1935.

They were both initially buried in St. Michael the Archangel Church in Cannes, France. The request to transfer the remains came from Nicholas Romanovich, who died in 2014 and Dmitry Romanovich and was made last year. They are now reburied in the Chapel of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in the Bratsk military cemetery in Moscow. (Read more.)